News Currents

May 8, 1991

By Kurt Shillinger

UNITED STATES In Washington, police fired tear gas at rock-throwing youths May 6 in a second night of rioting in the largely Hispanic Mount Pleasant neighborhood. The unrest was sparked by the shooting of a Hispanic man by a police officer.... Energy Secretary James Watkins said May 6 that widespread scientific illiteracy was having a deadly effect on America's future. Watkins told the American Newspaper Publishers Association that the country's education system has failed to keep pace with the most technically compl e

x society the world has ever known.... Police say they will recommend that prosecutors charge William Kennedy Smith with sexual battery for the alleged attack on a woman at his family's Palm Beach, Fla., estate March 30.

MIDDLE EAST DEVELOPMENTS

In Kani Masi, Iraq, relief workers said coalition forces must extend their security zone in northern Iraq if a plan to coax hundreds of thousands of Kurds down from Turkish border mountains is to succeed. The coalition troops want to bring Kurds down from camps on bleak hillsides before summer heat dries up water supplies.... US Secretary of State James Baker III will fly to the Middle East May 10 to meet Soviet Foreign Minister Alexander Bessmertnykh in a superpower effort to ease regional tensions. Mo s

cow has sought to dampen expectations that the Soviet Union will restore diplomatic ties with Israel during Bessmertnykh's visit.... Thousands of US troops began their final withdrawal from southern Iraq May 7.